Big food faces a big challenge

Updated 6.10.2015
This might be a good opportunity to use the phrase (cliche?) "death by 1000 cuts." Fortune reports that Big Food (large conglomerate processed food manufacturers) is experiencing declining market share. In this case, I am with those who celebrate this change. Not because I'm against companies who process food per se, but because I am against what that food has become.

My background is pertinent here.

I am a materials science engineer by training. Although I never did, one type of job such engineers can be hired to do is to tweak industrial processes so that constituents are delivered in factory at the correct temperature, composition, viscosity, etc. At the size of production at these food factories, the components are food any more, they're materials in a process. That's how all the preservative and chemical additives come to be used. Not because they are necessary for food prep, but because they are necessary for processing such a large mass of material.

I've certainly told the story in person, but I'm not sure I've ever written it down and published it before. (No matter, really, given how few people read these pages.) A significant engineering problem is scaling, as in scaling up a process from the lab (or kitchen) to an industrial scale operation. It is never a case where a small batch process can simply be multiplied by a factor to be done on a larger scale.

As the mass of material increases, temperature gradients, density gradients, etc begin to be introduced to the process. Even heat conduction through a large mass is no small matter. Any industrial processed food has been engineered extensively to deal with these problems. And then factors such as taste or nutrient profile are adjusted to account for the industrial processing. This is how Subway became a target for scammers such as Vani Hari. The "yoga mat" chemical in their bread— while harmless— wasn't there because the it's required for the making of bread. It was added to make the bread easier to industrially processed.

Big food defenders and "Food Babe" skeptics always point to the poor science of Hari's arguments, and in that they are correct. But they are extremely loathe to address what I think is the underlying issue, which is the industrial processing itself. If people were comfortable with the status of the processing of food, Hari's nonsense wouldn't keep hitting an artery.

I'm not a fool, and I don't think the chemical in the Subway bread was harmful. But do I think it needed to be there? Only if the primary concern is profit. The purpose of the chemical was to shorten the processing time of the bread— that's not precisely the explanation, but it's the effect. Time is money and if a chemical added to the bread resulted in buns a wee bit faster, then from a materials processing point of view, in goes the chemical. Especially if, as in this case, taste and quality is not affected. And no one can argue that it was because it was removed with no change in the product.

This is the real problem that big food faces. Its very bigness won't allow it to process food profitably except on a large industrial scale. And on a massive industrial scale you can't use grandmother's recipes and ingredients, you have to use industrial techniques.